A manual call point is the device that lets a person raise the fire alarm on purpose. It is deliberately the simplest thing in the system: press, and the building knows. Everything else in a fire alarm system is trying to do automatically what a call point does when somebody has already noticed.
What counts as a manual call point
A device fixed on an escape route that a person operates directly to signal fire to the control panel. The common type has a frangible or resettable element behind a red faceplate. What is not a manual call point is a general push button that happens to trigger something, or a door release, even where the two are mounted side by side and look similar to somebody in a hurry.
Telling it apart from the buttons beside it
Green break glass units are usually emergency door releases, not fire alarm points, and confusing the two in an emergency costs time in both directions. Red is the convention for fire, green for escape and door release. Where both are present at an exit, they should be separated and labelled clearly enough that nobody has to think about which is which.
Testing a fire alarm manual call point
During the weekly test somebody operates a single point with the test key, confirms the sounders are audible across the areas that matter, then resets the point and the panel and records which point was used. Rotating through the points over successive weeks is the whole method: testing the same point every week proves that point works and says nothing about the rest.
When one is operated for real
Treat it as a fire until somebody has established otherwise, and record it either way. A point operated maliciously or by accident is still an event worth logging, because a pattern of operations at one location is information: it usually means the point is in a bad place, unprotected, or being mistaken for a door release.
Questions people ask about fire call point
What is a manual call point?
A device on an escape route that a person operates to raise the fire alarm directly, rather than waiting for a detector. It is the fastest way to warn a building and the reason detection alone is never the whole system.
Is a green break glass unit a fire alarm point?
Normally no. Green units are usually emergency door releases. Red is the convention for fire alarm devices, and mixing the two up at an exit is a real risk worth designing out.
How is a call point reset after a test?
With the call point key, which pops the operated element back out. The panel then needs silencing and resetting separately, and both steps go in the log book.
Is a manual call point fire alarm the whole system, or one device?
One device on a system, and the phrase hides the distinction that matters. The call point is the red unit a person operates; the system is the panel, the detection, the sounders and any interfaces. A building can have a system that is call points and sounders only, with no automatic detection at all, which is the manual category and is legitimate where people are always present and can raise the alarm themselves. What it cannot do is protect an empty building at night, which is why the category is chosen by the fire risk assessment rather than by price.
How to open fire alarm call points, and reset them
With the key or tool that came with the system: most modern points have a plastic element that flexes rather than breaks, and a small key turns or levers it back so the point resets, after which the panel is silenced and reset at the panel. Two rules go with it. Reset the point BEFORE resetting the panel, or the panel will simply re alarm, and record the event in the logbook with which point operated and why, because a pattern of activations at one point is either a fault or somebody using it as a door release.